


Between the Lines

by tawg



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU - comic book industry, Artist Steve Rogers, Capsicoul - Freeform, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, in which the main characters overthink it, romcom, writer phil coulson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-14 02:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers is an up-and-coming comic book artist. Phil Coulson is a comic book writer with one last story to tell. This is a story about fanboys, aborted one night stands, and heroes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You need to give up on love,” Tony yelled, pointing a finger at Steve. The music in the bar was a little too loud for conversation, a little too fast to dance to, and far too modern for Steve’s tastes. But Tony was the one taking him out to celebrate, so Tony got to call the shots.

“Don’t listen to him,” Bruce called over the din. “You know where Tony’s advice gets you.”

“Didn’t my advice just get you the contract of your wet dreams?” Tony asked indignantly. “Didn’t my advice to pursue your goals, no matter how ridiculous and stupid they may be, get you where you are today?”

“Didn’t you advise me to turn down this contract?” Steve returned wryly.

Tony shrugged it off. “My advice is golden,” he insisted. “And you need to quit moping around and fretting about this new job, and you need to go and get some ass.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Bruce said. “You have enough ass as it is.”

“What?” Steve yelled over the music. “What’s wrong with my ass?” 

“This is your night!” Tony cried. “Live a little. Celebrate. Have a drunken hook-up.”

“I’m really not that kind of guy,” Steve replied.

“Everyone is that kind of guy,” Tony insisted. “Even Bruce is that kind of guy.”

“It’s more that I’m the kind of guy who lets Tony Stark have drunken hook-ups with me,” Bruce clarified.

“Don’t worry,” Steve said back over the thumping music. “Your reputation remains untarnished.”

“Find a guy, buy him a drink, knock his socks off,” Tony instructed.

“There’s not really any guys here that I-”

“You could try talking to the guy at the bar,” Bruce said, cutting Steve off with a smirk.

Tony immediately twisted around in his seat. “What guy at the bar?”

“Grey suit, brown hair,” Bruce said. “Stevie’s been glancing over at him since he came in.”

“He looks kinda dull,” Tony commented. “Who wears a suit to a bar anyway?”

“Not everyone is stylish enough to come out in gym pants and old t-shirts,” Bruce returned.

Steve tried to shrink in on himself. Given his small stature, there wasn’t much way to make him any smaller. “I have a thing for guys who look like spies,” he mumbled, uncertain whether his words were heard over the noise of the club.

Tony turned back to Steve and gave him a pointed look. “Well then?”

Steve fidgeted. “What if he’s not, you know?”

“Steve,” Bruce said patiently. “He wouldn’t be in here if he wasn’t. This is the most obnoxiously gay bar in New York. I know, because Tony has dragged me through _every_ gay bar in New York.”

“What if he’s meeting someone?” Steve tried.

“He’d be watching the room,” Tony answered. 

“And even if he is, you could go and keep him company,” Bruce added.

Steve could see his friends closing in for the kill. “What… what if he’s not interested?” Steve asked. “In me?”

Bruce and Tony exchanged a silent, exasperated look. “Steve,” Tony said patiently. “You do not find out if someone is interested in you by sitting in a corner and refusing to make eye contact. At least give the guy the chance to turn you down.”

“What Tony means,” Bruce said, cutting in sharply, “is that you never know what someone else finds attractive. That guy didn’t catch Tony’s eye, but you haven’t looked at anyone else in here.”

“And Bruce isn’t exactly a hunk, but I keep trying to get into his pants,” Tony added.

Bruce frowned at him. “Stop helping.”

Steve glanced around, but he saw no evidence of anyone even theoretically finding him attractive. In fact, nearly everyone seemed to be looking into their drinks. Sunday night wasn’t exactly the best night to go clubbing, and most people in the club were either having a drink after an early dinner or grabbing a drink before a late one. It was not the optimal time for picking up. But then, in Steve’s mind, it was never an optimal time for picking up. 

“Steve,” Bruce said patiently. “The only reason you are still single is because you sabotage every interaction with someone you like.”

“Accurate,” Tony agreed.

“Usually by refusing to interact at all.”

“I’ve started telling people that you have foot problems to explain why you spend so much time staring at your shoes,” Tony added.

“Just go over there, stand beside him, order a drink, and say ‘hi’,” Bruce instructed. “That’s it. That’s all you need to do. I swear to you, you will manage to pick up if you try.”

Steve worried at his bottom lip with his teeth, but Bruce was already leaning over the little table and doing something with his hair, and Tony was being disturbingly efficient at unbuttoning Steve’s shirt and splaying the collar. Steve didn’t exactly have a lot to show off, but Tony grinned and Bruce gave him a thumbs up, and Steve decided that making a fool of himself would probably count as a thank you gift for all of their help over the years.

“Go get ‘em, tiger,” Tony instructed. He gave Steve a slap on the ass and sent him on his way. Steve was going to need better friends.

Although, ten minutes later when Steve was in the hallway behind the bar and he was devouring the mouth of a man named Phil, Steve would admit that maybe Tony occasionally had some good ideas. Phil, who had been waiting for friends but had been positive that they wouldn’t show. Phil, who had a quiet voice that somehow cut through the noise of the club and did things to Steve’s chest. Phil, who had laughed at Steve’s dry commentary of the club and had smiled with quiet curiosity when Steve had suggested, heart hammering in his chest, that they escape the noise for a while. Phil, who had one of Steve’s favourite names on the planet and kissed like an expert and made a happy noise when Steve rose up onto his toes and pressed him against a wall that was practically decoupaged with posters.

Phil, who had a hand on Steve’s crotch and was dangerously close to making him come in his jeans.

Steve pulled away from Phil’s mouth to groan, to lick a stripe of the hot skin of Phil’s neck that was visible above his collar, to bite the skin below his ear. “We should,” he panted, and then struggled to find the words that went next because Phil had his other hand in Steve’s hair, was pulling Steve’s head back and ducking down to suck at Steve’s throat. _We should get out of here_ , is what Steve meant. _We should go back to my place or your place or any place and do this all night long_ , is what he meant.

And then Phil’s mobile phone went off. “Sorry,” he said, before giving Steve’s neck a parting bite. “Let me just…” 

Steve plastered himself against Phil as the other man pulled his phone out of his pocket, cupped Phil’s ass, slid a hand up and felt the strong lines of Phil’s back through a crisp and clean shirt, and had to bury his face against the shoulder of Phil’s jacket because oh God he loved a man in a suit.

Phil thumbed the answer call button, and said, “Coulson,” into his phone by way of greeting. Steve froze. Phil scratched Steve’s scalp absently as he said, “When you say ‘he’s in jail’...?” Steve pulled back and studied Phil’s face, trying to place it. “Wait, where are you calling from?” Phil asked. “So you’re in jail too? Perfect. I hope you’re both proud of yourselves.”

Steve took a small comfort in the fact that, for once, the mood hadn’t been killed by his own incompetence. “I’m sorry,” Phil said when he hung up. “I need to go bail my team out.”

Steve looked down at Phil, brown hair and blue eyes and kiss-reddened lips. _Phil Coulson._ “You’re-”

“The worst date ever?” Phil replied as he straightened his clothes. “I know, I know. I’m sorry.” He sighed, and looked up at Steve with a wry smile. “Better luck next time,” he said, and then he opened the door leading back to the club and disappeared into the noisy cavern without a backwards glance.

“So,” Tony said as Steve slid back into his seat. “That looks like it went well.” Bruce pushed a drink over to Steve with a sympathetic grimace.

“Phil Coulson,” Steve said weakly.

“What?” Tony asked, leaning forwards to hear.

“Phil Coulson,” Steve repeated. “I think that was Phil Coulson.”

Tony and Bruce exchanged a look, and Bruce pulled his phone out to start Googling. “You mean,” Tony said slowly. “You mean that? That guy right there?”

Bruce held his phone out, an image large and bright on its screen. “This guy?” Bruce asked. Steve stared at the picture. The same nose, the same eyes, the same vaguely irritated expression he’d been wearing when Steve had first slid into place beside him, though it had disappeared when Steve offered his hand. Steve nodded, wordlessly.

“Wait, you’re telling me that the one guy you randomly pick up at a bar-”

“The _worst_ bar,” Bruce clarified.

“- just so happens to be the guy you quit working for me over? The weird spy writer you’ve been obsessing over for years?”

“The same guy you start drawing for tomorrow?” Bruce added.

Steve had his face pressed to the sticky tabletop, both arms wrapped around his head to try and block out the rest of the world. He nodded miserably.

Bruce and Tony stared at Steve, impressed. “Wow,” Tony said at last.

“Lucky,” Bruce added.

Steve looked up at his friends and licked his lips. They tasted like kissing. “ _Phil Coulson_ ,” he wailed. 

His life was officially over.

~*~

Steve had been a weedy, sickly kid. His father had died when he was young, and his mother had followed when he was in his early teens. He grew up in a neat but sparse apartment in Brooklyn, and then finished growing up in a cluttered and noisy foster home. His foster carer, a gruff ex-military man by the name of Phillips (more commonly known as ‘Colonel’, always addressed as ‘sir’), gave everyone under his roof enough pocket money to buy some junk food and a ticket to the movies. Steve spent all of his on comic books.

Steve had actually bought the very first issue of ‘Agent of Shield’, by Phil Coulson, the week it came out. He read it three times that evening, and then went back to the newsagent the following day to ask when the next issue would be out. All of the other comics Steve collected had been about superheroes, had been about special men and women doing impossible things.

‘Agent of Shield’ was about a government agent, of sorts. An ordinary man in a black suit who went out and did what needed to be done. As soon as Steve found out that Phil Coulson was a writer and had a few books of short stories out, he cycled over to the library and made sad eyes at the librarian until she agreed to order them in. They were science fiction stories, which was already Steve’s favourite genre, but rather than mad scientists and ray guns Coulson wrote about riddles and moral dilemmas. Steve later learned that such stories weren’t unusual, that science fiction was a whole genre built on a foundation of ‘what ifs’ – but when it came to stories about problems that had no neat solution, Coulson had been Steve’s first.

The first author to make him sit back halfway through a story and try to puzzle it out on his own. 

Several years later the same librarian had given Steve a photocopy of an interview with Coulson from a science fiction magazine. Phil had said that he created the ‘Agent of Shield’ because the world was filled with normal people doing amazing things and that he struggled to identify with the radiation-powered heroes that otherwise dominated comic books. 

_“I drew the first three issues of Agent because I didn’t have any artist friends who had the spare time and I knew that I needed to submit a comic and not just a script. I spent a month having a meltdown and teaching myself to draw, because I loved comic books and that was where I wanted to be. So for me, the Agent has become a symbol of what I can do if I let myself want something enough to stop being scared of the hard work. I look at those first few, ugly issues and then I can turn to any challenge and think, ‘I can do that’.”_

For Steve Rogers, at seventeen years of age, those were important words.

The Agent of Shield – who never had a name, or an age, and had been drawn as a woman on several occasions – was Steve’s hero even when he was too old to indulge in such things, even though the comic was sporadically published at best. He got sick of being a wheezing weakling and harangued his doctor until he got put on an inhaler that worked. He started running, and even though he never lost the look of being the runt of the litter, he stopped feeling like he would be blown over if he stepped outside on a windy day. He threw himself into his drawings, even though Colonel Phillips warned him that it would never get him stable employment. He won himself an art school scholarship and between pastel portraits and watercolour landscapes, he filled the edges of his lecture notes with doodles of men in suits and sunglasses.

And finally, after years of idolising and hoping and dreaming (and shitty jobs at restaurants and drawing pictures for anyone who’d hire him, and then getting tangled up with Tony Stark of Stark Publishing and that whole online comic empire), and then after quietly letting go of the dream because Phil Coulson’s name had been showing up on comics less and less as the years went on, he’d finally gotten a contract with Furious Comics. 

He’d met with Nick Fury, director of Furious, and after the most nerve-wracking interview of his life, he’d managed to blurt out, “I just have one request-”

“Request all you like kid,” Nick had said bluntly. “But if you sign up your first job has already been decided. We’ve finally bled out a script for a new ‘Agent of Shield’ comic and we need someone to make it look pretty. You ever heard of the character?”

“Yeah,” Steve hard replied weakly. “Kinda.”

“Come in next Monday and we’ll give you the crash course.”

And so Steve had been set – a dream job on a dream project. He was only just past thirty years old and already he had the opportunity to work with Phillip freaking Coulson. It had been too good to be true.

And Steve had gone and fucked it up by hitting on his hero-for-life and grabbing the ass of the guy who was pretty much his new boss. Bruce could call Steve ‘lucky’ all he wanted. Steve was pretty sure that catalysing the collapse of his own dream was the exact opposite.


	2. Chapter 2

“You can’t be mad at me forever,” Clint said, throwing a winning smile in Phil’s direction. Without looking away from his draft, Phil threw a pen at him in response. Clint snatched it out of the air and then threw it up, lodging it in the ceiling tile above his desk. If anyone at Furious needed a pen, they just stood on Clint’s desk and pulled one down.

“He can be mad for a long time,” Natasha replied. She set a coffee and a cookie down on Phil’s desk. She was the one who knew how to win back Phil’s affection. 

“Especially when he has to bail both of his co-workers out of jail,” Phil said icily. “What the hell were you two doing?”

“I’m glad you asked,” Clint said at the same time as Natasha answered, “That’s classified information.” 

Phil looked between the letterer and the penciller. “I don’t want to know,” he decided. “I don’t want to know what you were trying to steal, or why you got into a fight with a guard, or even why you were both wearing catsuits while you were doing it. I don’t want to know. The only reason you two haven’t been fired is because the boss can’t be bothered finding your replacements.”

That was largely true in Clint’s case. Letterers weren’t too hard to find, although few of them had Clint’s speed and precision. He had a way of looking at a space and making the words fill it just right. Natasha, on the other hand, was definitely a talented artist. She would have gone a lot further than Furious if her reputation hadn’t preceded her. But Nick Fury liked people who rocked the boat and Natasha could certainly be relied upon to do just that. Plus, her sketches were amazing.

“It was going to be a present,” Clint said sulkily. Natasha stomped on his foot to keep him from saying anything more, and Phil ignored them both.

All he had wanted to do was have a drink. He had spent most of the weekend completely wound up, and when Clint had invited him out he’d accepted simply so he’d stop pacing the length of his apartment. Clint had warned Phil that he and Natasha would be a little late. When Phil had somehow earned the attention of a lean man with plenty of sarcasm and a wicked mouth, he wouldn’t have minded if his co-workers hadn’t shown up at all. But no, the pair of them had to disrupt even that.

“If it’ll make it up to you,” Clint started, but Phil silenced him with a sharp look.

“Come on,” Natasha said, nudging Clint’s shoulder. “Let him freak out in peace.”

Clint followed her lead, though he loitered in the doorway for a moment. “Phil, seriously, the draft is _fine_.” Phil ignored him, focussed instead on the words of the page, and after a moment Clint finally left.

Phil took care with his work. Producing a comic was always a collaborative effort, and he liked to make sure that his contribution was as finely honed as it could be before handing it over to the artist. To that end, he tried to tailor his stories to suit the artist he was working with as much as he could. He saved dialogue for those who were good at faces and journeys for those who seemed to favour backgrounds, and the single issue of a Shield Agent convention had been written for Natasha’s rare brush stokes, because she had a beautiful way of finding a single slash of colour and making it look perfectly at home in amongst a sea of greys and blacks. 

And then he’d gotten word that Nick had finally secured an interview with Steve Rogers. _Steve Rogers_ of all people. Steve Rogers who liked bright colours and bold lines, who produced fantastically wonderful portraits and amazingly energetic action poses. Phil would have sold his soul just to get Steve Rogers to consider doing a _cover_ for ‘Agent of Shield’. But no, he was doing the interior. He was doing the whole comic. Phil had been having palpitations ever since Nick Fury, grinning like the cat who had been locked in with the cream, had given him the news.

Phil had a long standing contract with Furious for a number of reasons. One was that the Agent belonged to Furious and Phil wasn’t exactly keen to hand the reins of the character over to anyone else. Another was that Nick had found out that Phil could rewrite a script in a day and could turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse if he was given a whole weekend for editing. Phil had spent less and less time over the past ten years writing comics, and more and more time editing and soothing egos. He was, Nick had pointed out, quite good at management for someone who was hired to be a writer.

And Phil had been okay with that. He still wrote, because he didn’t know how not to write, and Nick gave him free reign when it came to content. He shared an office with Clint and Natasha, who gave him all of the important social news of the company, so he was well situated to intervene in any clashes before they exploded. Furious was a mid-sized comic book company, and in keeping with the rest of the industry most of their artistic staff worked from home. Phil spent a lot of time monitoring e-mail exchanges and calling people to remind them of their deadlines and what would happen if they were to miss them. It was less stressful than writing and it was even fun in its own way.

Every now and then Nick would teasingly ask, “When are you going to write me another comic, Agent?” And Phil would reply, “When you learn to run your own business, _Director_.” And Nick would laugh at him and shake his head. “Next year,” he’d always promise. “I’ll make sure you get the time.”

Though, in all honesty, Phil was considering retiring from writing altogether. He was getting old. The world of comic books had been changing for some time. 

Phil had read comic books throughout his childhood and had been locked into the silver age mindset of bizarre superpowers and easy forgiveness, because villains had a simple kind of badness to them in those days. When Phil had gone to Nick Fury, fifteen years earlier, with his laughable attempt at a comic book in his hands, comics had already been changing. Phil had seen a path with less marvels of modern science and more average stories of amazing things. It had seemed like everyone else had taken the route of large muscles and brutal endings. Phil was probably one of a handful of comic book writers who no longer liked reading comics. They weren’t an escape into happy times like they had once been, were now gritty and dark and ‘edgy’, and Phil had floundered. He had put the Agent away for a number of years and played with robots and aliens and other people’s stories instead.

And then he’d been given a free copy of ‘Captain America’ at a convention, a comic by Steve Rogers. The art had been beautiful. No dialogue or monologue, no words on the page at all. Just primary colours and cats rescued from trees and a larger than life hero doing ordinary things. Phil had adored it. He had bluntly told Nick that they _needed_ to get this man on their team, and Nick had listened. Phil had a paid subscription to the ‘Captain America’ webcomic, despite the teasing he got for giving his pay check to Stark Publishing of all companies.

Then Fury had told him to write Steve Rogers a comic. “You’re too good to be doing this behind the scenes bullshit,” he’d said bluntly. “Though you’re damn good at doing it anyway. Write me another Agent story.”

“No one wants to read that stuff,” Phil had protested.

“And yet the trades still consistently sell.”

“You should put him on Sue Storm’s title, or even Pym’s.”

“You always preach that the people I hire should start near the bottom until you’ve properly scared them out of their egos,” Fury had returned.

“It’d be a waste of his time,” Phil had insisted.

“I know that this kid could draw stick figures on a used napkin and you’d still stare at it for hours. Phil, cut the crap. He was always going to work with you, and if I stuck him with anyone else you’d seethe with jealousy anyway.”

“I don’t seethe,” Phil had replied stiffly.

“Man up and write a damn book already,” Fury had replied. “His interview is coming up and I don’t want him twiddling his thumbs because you’re having one of your fanboy moments.”

Phil had given Fury a scathing look, and left without another word. But he had, after several sleepless, jittery nights, come up with an idea for the six issue run Fury had refused to be talked down from. And he had gotten the first three scripts written before Rogers’ interview, and had worked the first two through the proofreading stage before the weekend. He was down to the final tweaks of the first script.

It was a fine line, when writing with an artist in mind, between asking for the things that Phil himself would like to see and ordering the artist to ignore their own instincts. But Fury had been right – Steve Rogers could scribble on a bathroom wall and Phil would be thrilled with the result. Steve’s profile picture on the Stark Publications webpage was a doodle of a man with blond hair and a wide grin. Phil assumed that Rogers was in his late thirties at least, due to his familiarity with the golden and silver age comic book tropes. He also suspected that the man would be a bit of a jerk, as it was not unusual for characters and creators to be opposites. The rumour that Rogers was one of Tony Stark’s best friends certainly supported those suspicions. Phil was well aware that it was unlikely that Rogers had even heard of him.

“Coulson,” Fury bellowed from the hallway, because he liked to impress upon people from the start that he was not afraid to use high volume as a negotiating tool. “Get out here and meet the new kid.”

Phil locked the mental image in his mind – he would either be prepared for the reality of Steve Rogers or pleasantly surprised. He stepped into the hall with what Clint called his ‘work face’ on: polite but detached, interested but calm. From behind, Steve Rogers was a short guy with a stiff, straight posture (unusual for an artist) and a head full of dark blond hair. And then Rogers turned around to greet Phil, and it took all of Phil’s control to ensure that his face didn’t change one tiny bit.

Phil wanted to say, _Hi_. Wanted to say, _I know you – I was minutes away getting your dick in my hand last night_.

Instead he said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” and offered his hand. He noticed too late that there was an ink stain on his middle finger, but Rogers didn’t even look at Phil’s hand as he shook it, just stared up at Phil with an equally impassive expression.

“The pleasure is mine,” Rogers replied, and Phil had to give him points for good manners. 

“Great, everyone’s happy,” Fury said, stepping back through the doorway of his office. “Now get the hell out of here and give the kid the tour.”

Phil let go of Rogers’ hand and walked back down the hallway, trusting that Rogers would follow him. “The office is actually quite small,” Phil said as Steve fell into step beside him. “We have this floor and the one below, which is where the meeting room is. Most of the team work from their own, private studios and send their work in. Since you’re down for pencils, inks, and colours you should be submitting drafts to the editor at each stage. However, I’m your editor for this project and I’ll be happy with just pencils and then the final.”

“Okay,” Rogers said. Phil could feel the other man staring at him, and ignored it.

“If you want to work in the building, we can find space for you. You’re encouraged to drop in when you like and I expect some kind of update from you at least once a week. If whoever you’re looking for isn’t at their desk, they’ll probably be in the café on the ground floor. Clint Barton will be doing the lettering – he is definitely down in the café right now, but otherwise he’d in here with me.” Phil ducked into his office, and grabbed a packet off his desk. “Here’s the story and the relevant background info. The script for the first issue is printing now. Any questions?”

Rogers tore his gaze from the forest of pens stuck in the ceiling above Clint’s desk. “Yeah, one,” he said, looking up at Phil. “Did I have my tongue in your mouth last night?”

Rogers had a soft, pink mouth and eyebrows that seemed familiar with annoyance, and he had a good poker face at his disposal. Phil considered him for a moment before responding. “I’m sure it will be a pleasure to work with you,” he said firmly. “We’re very excited to have you on the team.”

“Right,” Rogers said, taking the packet from Phil. “Same.”

Phil stapled the script together at the top left hand corner and passed it to Steve Rogers, amazing artist and a damn fine kisser. “My contact details are on the front,” he said. Rogers nodded and left without another word. Phil watched him go. 

It was fair to say that Phil had been completely unprepared for the reality of Steve Rogers. He made a note to ease up on Clint. After all, if things had been that awkward after some kissing and petting, the phone call from Natasha had probably saved Phil from much, much worse.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve spent three days fretting before admitting that he had a problem. Three days of flicking through the packet Coulson had given him — three comics, a one page summary of the character of the Agent, and a rough timeline of the universe. All of the information that the uninitiated would need to ease themselves into the project, though Steve didn’t exactly agree with the comics that had been selected. He hadn’t even been able to look through the script, which was a new kind of torture. Steve had spent years scanning the comic book news sites for even a hint of a new ‘Agent of Shield’ comic. Now he had the script for the first of six issues on his desk and he couldn’t bring himself to read it.

What if Coulson didn’t want him working on the comic? What if Steve got the call that, ‘sorry, due to the conflict of interest that was you trying to get off with Phil Coulson in the hallway by the restrooms of the shittiest gay nightclub in New York, we’re just not comfortable with keeping you on this project’?

Steve lay on the floor of his tiny studio apartment, a habit he’d never been allowed to indulge in his youth due to fear of ‘catching a chill’, and alternated between switching his phone off so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the call he was certain would come, and obsessively checking his voice mail to make sure he hadn’t missed it. At midday on Wednesday, after Steve had realised that he was putting off eating lunch because he was certain that he was going to be sick after getting kicked off his contract with Furious Comics, he realised that he needed someone to talk some sense into him.

“I was wondering when you’d call,” Peggy said, her clipped tones both familiar and terrifying. “I had to find out about your new job from the internet of all places. Congratulations, I suppose.”

“Thanks, Peggy,” Steve said. He was sagging with relief just hearing her voice. “I didn’t want to tell anyone until I definitely had the job. And then it’s been kind of a crazy few days for me.”

“Well then,” Peggy said firmly, “you’d better tell me all about it.”

Steve had met Peggy Carter on his first day of art school. Steve had known about girls in a vague, second-hand kind of way. As a teenager Steve had been shy, awkward, and completely uninterested in heterosexuality. There had been a gaping chasm between himself and the creatures his friends worked so hard to attract – girls who wanted to kiss boys, and who wanted nothing to do with the sad and geeky Steve Rogers. So Steve had never bothered, had never bothered to learn how to talk to girls and had instead developed a deep and loving admiration for the leading ladies in the collection of black and white movies that had filled the downstairs living room of Colonel Phillip’s foster home. Those ladies had passion and personality and, of upmost importance to Steve, always got their man.

And then he had met Peggy Carter. Peggy Carter who didn’t giggle or simper or sneer. Peggy Carter who had a nineteen-forties hairstyle and paired it with bright lipstick that was straight out of the eighties. Peggy Carter who wore a skirt and heels, and nearly dislocated the thumb of the first year who had shown his approval of her attire by slapping her rear. Peggy Carter who was tough and ferocious, and classically beautiful as she tossed the boy down on the ground and told him that a skirt was not a sign of consent.

Steve had stared at her with his mouth open, stumped and startled by this bizarre new creature. He had sat down at the table next to her with his lunch, and hadn’t even opened his mouth before she was on him. “I suppose you want to try your luck too, hmm?” she asked, scathingly angry. “Going to try and tame the savage beast for the entertainment of all your knuckle-dragging friends?”

“Uh, no. I’m gay,” Steve had replied. “And I don’t actually have any friends. And I’ll leave you alone, if you like. But I don’t like bullies, and I thought that what you did was really incredible.”

“That’s a shame,” Peggy had replied.

“That you’re incredible?” Steve had asked, confused.

“No, that you’re queer,” Peggy explained. “My mother would have liked you.”

“Oh.” Steve had looked down at his lunch, and then glanced up at her with a small, shy smile.

“And yes, fine,” Peggy had said with a dramatic sigh. “We can be friends. Until you do something stupid, then you’re on your own.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve had replied, and Peggy had allowed herself a faintly pleased smile.

Peggy taught Steve a lot of things – she taught him how to throw a punch and how to use the Harvard system of referencing and how to talk to women (who turned out to be not as different or as scary as Steve had once thought). They traded fashion tips and derided one another’s artistic heroes, and when the peer pressure to ‘just try it’ became too much, Peggy was the first girl Steve ever kissed. In many ways Peggy wasn’t a friend so much as a motivating force in his life. Peggy Carter would always be Steve’s first choice when he needed someone to call out his stupidity.

“So,” he said, still lying on the floor of his studio apartment, “I stuck my tongue in Phil Coulson’s mouth.”

“Oh gods,” Peggy replied. “Well, you’ve had a mad crush on the man for years. I suppose I really shouldn’t be surprised.”

“He’s my boss,” Steve added.

“Yes, I saw. Remember? That big news you didn’t bother telling me about?”

“I kissed my boss,” Steve said helplessly.

Peggy’s laugh was a light tinkle of schadenfreude. “You’ve been having a breakdown over this, haven’t you? You’ve been sobbing into your vintage comic book collection.”

“I have not,” Steve replied shortly. “You know what the water damage would do to them.” Peggy laughed again, and Steve was comforted by the confirmation of his ridiculousness. “Seriously, Peggy. This is my dream job and I’ve already fucked it up.”

“Ugh, it seems that Stark’s vocabulary and his penchant for drama has rubbed off on you,” Peggy said with distaste. “Look, Steve, do you know what we do when we get a job?”

Steve sighed. “What?”

“We do the job,” Peggy said bluntly. “If this is your dream job – and the four years you spent gushing about this comic at school assures me that it is – then you do the job. Kissing someone hasn’t made your fingers fall off, has it?”

“No,” Steve confirmed, a little sulkily.

“Well there you go. Less hysterics, more art,” she said firmly.

“But... It was before we had met, you know? In the professional setting. And then we did meet and we recognised each other and I’m sure he was just staring at me thinking ‘This is the loser who put his tongue in my mouth to the Bollywood remix of Call Me Maybe’. It’s... He’s pretty much my hero, Peggy, and now it’s too awkward for us to even talk to each other.”

“Well lying on your floor sulking won’t change that,” Peggy replied sharply.

“... How did you know I was on the floor?”

“You’re consistent, if nothing else.” She paused and sighed. “Look, Steve,” she said gently, “I’m not the person to be talking to about your love life. I wish I could help you, but I can’t even get my own sorted out. You need to talk to the Horndog of Brooklyn for that. But if you want my advice, which I know you do because otherwise you wouldn’t have called, because you’re an awful friend-”

“Sorry, Peggy.”

“Shut up and do the job,” Peggy said firmly. “Don’t just do what you were hired to do, do everything that you can do. Put everything you have into this, because I know you’ve been waiting for this moment since you were fifteen years old, and I’m damn well not going to let you shoot yourself in the foot now. You are going to stop sulking immediately, and you are going to get your boards out, and you are going to love this job because you are finally living your dream.”

Steve stared up at his ceiling, a wide and soppy grin on his face. “Thanks, Peggy,” he said sincerely.

“Oh shut up,” Peggy replied, and then she hung up on him.

Peggy’s patented, mildly-abusive pep talk had given Steve the kick he needed to drag himself up off the floor and start clearing his desk, but he still had a heavy heart. Because, of course, it wasn’t just providing the art for ‘Agent of Shield’ that had been his dream – working with Phil Coulson had been a large part of it, and last time they had encountered one another Steve had been left with the distinct impression that Coulson would be quite happy if they never exchanged words again. But then, Peggy had given him a piece of advice for that part of the dilemma, too: talk to the Master of Make-Outs and Morning-Afters. Steve thumbed clumsily through his phone book, and called the expert in such situations.

“Barnes,” a smooth voice said by way of greeting. “James Barnes.”

“Bucky, it’s me.”

“Thanks for clearing that up, shorty,” Bucky replied. “It’s not like caller ID tipped me off.”

“Bucky,” Steve said as he cleared his laundry pile off his desk chair, “I’ve done something stupid.”

“It’s about time,” Bucky replied, his voice warm with amusement. Steve could hear the small noises of Bucky settling back and making himself comfortable. “Tell your Uncle Buck all about it.”

Steve and Bucky had met at Colonel Phillips’ Budget Orphanarium, as Bucky liked to call it. He was a year younger than Steve, and had been charming and handsome even as a teenager. Steve had nursed a healthy crush on him for all of three days, until Bucky had informed him that comics were for babies and Steve had understood that they just were not meant to be. They remained good friends though – the first best friend of Steve’s whole life – and had kept in touch even after Steve had gone off to college and Bucky had stayed in Brooklyn and worked every job he could get his hands on. 

It was Bucky who had made sure that Steve had a job to pay the bills while he spent those early years struggling to become a professional artist. It was Bucky who had given Steve the most anti-climatic coming out story ever, when he’d replied to Steve’s confession with, “Yeah, and?” It was Bucky who had never called Steve ‘shorty’ as an insult, often claiming that he was referring to Steve’s temper more than his stature. It was Bucky who Steve could always trust to give the right advice rather than the advice he thought Steve wanted to hear.

“Was he a good kisser?” Bucky asked when Steve finished pouring his heart out.

“ _Bucky!_ ”

“Because if he was awful then you should quit wasting your time on him altogether,” Bucky said bluntly. 

“He was a good kisser,” Steve replied firmly, taking a seat at his desk. “Great, actually. I was really looking forward to—”

“If whatever you’re about to say involves his dick, I don’t need to hear it.”

Steve sighed. “I liked him,” he said plaintively. “And then I found out he was, you know, him. And then I found out that we’re working together and, just.” Steve rested his chin on a fist and frowned sharply.

“Look,” Bucky said calmly, “this kind of thing happens to me all the time. Do you know how many times I’ve slept with one of my bosses? Or two of them? And it’s allowed to be awkward the next day, sure. But you buckle down and you play nice and you follow their cues.”

“I guess so,” Steve replied glumly. “But you know what I’m like with people.”

“Yeah – you either charm the pants off them or baffle them completely. Do you think he knew who you were? When you were humping his leg, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Steve replied. “He didn’t say anything about it. We didn’t exactly exchange business cards first.”

“So he’s probably a spider,” Bucky said with confidence. “More scared of you than you are of him.”

Steve blinked. “What? Why?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, kid, but you’re getting to be a big thing. I mean, people aside from me know your name. I told Jess at work that we grew up together and she made one of those noises that only dogs can hear. I lied and told her your were hot, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Steve said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“And this Coulson guy, even when he was a big deal you were the only one who cared about him.”

“That’s not true,” Steve insisted.

“Pfft. Look, awkward hook-up aside, hanging out with him still gave you a nerd-gasm, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And he was on board with the whole making out thing at the time, yes?”

“I think so.”

“And this is not even the most tragic relationship you’ve been in, right?”

“I guess.”

“And things can only get better, so you may even get a second shot at sticking your gross tongue down his throat.”

Steve snorted, and didn’t dignify that suggestion with a more articulate response.

“And if it doesn’t work out, you can just quit.”

“I’m not going to quit,” Steve said firmly.

“Well there you go. I knew you already had it sorted. Now, I’ve gotta rest up for the night shift.”

“And I’ve got a comic to draw,” Steve said reaching for his jar of pencils.

“Come in for dinner tonight. You can tell me all about it.”

“Maybe. Thanks, Bucky.”

Bucky hung up on his own ramble about overly-sentimental geeks. Steve’s friends were right; he could damn well stop sulking and get to work on the project he had been dreaming of for years. And if he could do that, then he could handle talking to Phil Coulson again, maybe offer to buy the guy coffee and ease some of the awkwardness between them. Maybe casually slide it into conversation that the Agent of Shield was his hero and had been a defining influence in his life... Steve snorted. Being able to talk to Phil any time soon was definitely unlikely. But he had the man’s e-mail address. He could start small.


	4. Chapter 4

“So how’s the new kid working out?” Clint asked as he cut out speech bubbles. Clint did lettering the old fashioned way – cutting out the text panels, writing and then inking the script on them, and then tacking them to the artwork. He could do it digitally, if pressed, but as Furious Comics was a small-ish company and its print runs were often postponed by the printers in favour of the larger runs of the two industry giants, Nick left it to Phil’s discretion and Phil didn’t see much benefit in telling the artists how to do their jobs.

“Good,” Phil replied without looking away from his computer monitor. It had been just over a fortnight since he had met Steve Rogers, and scans of the first pencils had been e-mailed to Phil the previous evening. He’d sat on his couch staring at them for an hour, one hand pressed to his mouth because he’d had so many feelings inside him that he was worried about what would happen if they spilled out.

The pencils were wonderful. Steve was wonderful.

“Good,” Clint replied. “Think he’ll be coming in this week?”

“No,” Phil replied, which was shorthand for ‘I don’t know’, an abbreviation that Clint was familiar with. 

“He sent his roughs through?”

“Some.”

Clint nodded. “Cool.” He snipped silently for a while, though Phil knew that Clint was merely waiting for words to organise themselves in his head. Clint liked noise. If he couldn’t be surrounded by it, he would produce it. On days when Phil was pulled taut and twanging, Clint would take pity on him and hunker down with a pair of headphones clipped over his ears until the tension eased. But Phil was not quite at that point, and Clint was not unnecessarily sympathetic.

“So,” Clint said conversationally, “does he know you have a massive nerd-boner for him yet?”

Phil suppressed a wince. “No,” he replied with forced absentness, which Clint could take as a standard negative or another ‘I don’t know’ as he liked. 

“What are you saying ‘no’ to?” Natasha asked as she walked into the office, carrying a chai latte in a take away cup and a bag filled with new inks. “Because you’ve already signed off on my holiday leave.”

“Phil’s crush on Captain America,” Clint replied with a grin.

Phil could hear the amusement in Clint’s voice, and made the executive decision to ignore him. He had artists and writers to corral, because while Nick had a good business head on his shoulders, he did not have the patience needed when dealing with divas. A penciller and an inker on opposite coasts were caught up in a furious row, and Phil was doing his best to get them both on Skype for a video chat at the same time so he could stare disapprovingly at them until they behaved. He tuned back into the conversation when Natasha tapped a fingernail on the top of his screen.

“Lunch?”

“Please,” he replied. 

“Clint,” Natasha said firmly, shifting his feet off her computer chair, “go and get lunch.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “You were just down there,” he complained.

“Right,” Natasha said agreeably. “That means it’s your turn.”

Clint grumbled and griped, but he put his scissors down and laid a cutting mat over his loose bits of paper. “Seriously, Coulson,” he said as he picked Phil’s wallet out of his coat pocket and extracted the lunch funds. “If you keep eating up here, your ass is going to become one with your chair.”

“Do you think that comes under workplace disability classifications?” Phil asked without looking away from his screen.

“Your personality is a disability,” Clint replied.

Phil glanced up at Clint with a disappointed frown in place. “I’m glad we didn’t hire you for your witty repartee,” he replied. Clint snorted, and pushed away from the doorframe. “Really,” Phil continued. “The influence of your shining wit would make the company value plummet.”

“Maybe bankruptcy would get you out of the office,” Clint said, his hands shoved in his pants.

“Because the last time you lined me up for a night on the town ended _so well_ ,” Phil replied, returning his attention to the screen.

Clint snorted. “Pfft, like you didn’t have fun,” he said before slouching down the hallway. Phil waited until he heard the door of the stairwell bump closed before letting his shoulders relax.

“You know it’s a sign of affection,” Natasha said as she organised her new inks along the top of her desk.

“I know,” Phil replied. If Clint were in earshot, he’d say that it was juvenile, disruptive, a form of harassment, and not at all funny. But while Phil showed his appreciation for his friends with gentle praise and Natasha showed hers with small tokens, Clint showed his with teasing and goading. Natasha studied Phil for a long moment, and then turned her attention back to her desk. 

Phil sent off the last in a string of sternly worded e-mails and, with a moment to spare, pulled up the scans of Steve’s pencils. Steve had a big, bright style. His landscapes curved with dynamic perspective and his heroes were broad shouldered and square jawed. But Steve was classically trained and his panels could be incredibly detailed. The shape of buttons at a cuff, the specific knot of a tie, the angle of black sunglasses below stern eyebrows. The first page was full of small panels introducing the Agent, with neat spaces left for Clint’s letters to spell out the monologue. (Phil had been threatening Clint with giving the words to someone else if he kept acting up, but Clint was always going to be Phil’s first choice.)

A page of small panels, and then pages two and three were a wide spread, the Agent looking out over the landscape with the reader positioned behind the agent, gazing over his shoulder. A silhouette of blacks and greys facing a bright, southern sun. It looked wonderful. As soon as he could get away with it, Phil was planning on printing those first three pages out and tacking them to the crowded wall by his desk. 

The fourth page always gave Phil pause. The first view of the Agent’s face. He stared at the pencils, considering the crooked line of a nose, the familiar shape of a hairline, the thin lips. Behind him, Natasha leaned back in her chair until she was looking over his shoulder.

“It’s a good likeness,” she said, her voice level with critical detachment.

“Hm,” Phil replied. It was a _very_ good likeness, and Phil wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

The honest truth was that it was hard for writers to break into the comic book industry simply because no one had the time to read through scripts. For a submission to get noticed, it had to have art. Nick had told Phil that years and years ago, when they’d met at a small science fiction and fantasy convention and Phil had asked him how, exactly, a writer got a comics gig.

“If I wanted to read a wall of text I’d pick up a book,” Nick had said with a wide grin that was simultaneously challenging and charming. “If you’ve got a good idea, go and get some asshole to draw it out and then send it my way.” 

At the time Phil had exactly one artist friend – Jasper Sitwell, who had drawn several illustrations for Phil’s short stories over the years. Jasper had given Phil a rough estimate of how much it would cost to hire someone to draw out a comic, and Phil had felt moths fly out of his empty pockets. He’d been making enough to get by, but that kind of investment was well out of his budget.

“Draw it yourself,” Jasper had advised. “He never said it had to look any good.”

“Or you could draw it for me, and I could pay you in pizza?” Phil had suggested.

Jasper had given him a fond look. “I’ll swap you half that pie for some of my anatomy books?”

“Deal.”

Phil had spent a month hunched over a desk, teaching himself to draw and cribbing as much as he could from his own collection of comics. One of Jasper’s books had advised setting a mirror up and drawing various expressions from the reflection – so Phil had. As a result, the Agent had ended up with slightly more than a passing resemblance to Phil himself. Phil hadn’t cared at the time. A white man in his thirties with brown hair – there was nothing particularly noticeable about that, and the Agent had been wonderfully chameleonic in that respect. 

Different artists had their own styles. Phil had never included a particularly detailed description in his scripts, though people who both knew him and those first three issues usually connected the dots. Natasha had a cheeky habit of drawing herself, Clint, and Phil into crowd scenes. Her short run had a neat little thumbnail sketch of the three of them bickering. Phil had wanted to souvenir the original for himself, but Natasha had beaten him to the punch and it hung on the wall above her desk.

But Steve’s pencils were one of the few times the Agent had ever been presented as a clear, undeniable portrait of Phil.

Phil was still staring at page four, deep in thought, when Clint returned with their lunch. “Holy shit,” Clint said when he caught sight of Phil’s screen. “You been modelling for this kid without telling us?” He tossed Natasha her bagel and set the drinks down on his own desk. “Is there going to be a centrefold in issue four?” he continued, teasing Phil with a wide grin. “Did he draw you like he draws his French girls?”

Phil stood up and grabbed his sandwich out of Clint’s hands. “I’m going to eat out today,” he said as he angled his body between Clint and the edge of his desk. He didn’t look back as he stepped out of their shared office.

“You always take it too far,” Natasha scolded.

“The fuck was that about?” Clint asked in return, his voice carrying down the short hallway. 

Phil took the stairs, in no mood to wait for the lift. When he reached the ground floor he cursed himself for not having thought to grab his jacket. It wasn’t a cold day, but the sky was overcast and Phil felt underdressed when walking the streets in half a suit. He had learned very early on in his career that books were always judged either by their reputation or their covers, and since he had very little reputation outside of a small circle of people in a small industry, his own cover had become very important to him.

There was a reason why the only comic book character he had created wore a suit.

While Phil was realistic about the possibility of the Agent getting turned over to another writer in the future (in fact, Nick had threatened to do just that if Phil had stalled on writing his script any longer), the honest truth was that the character was very dear to him. Phil had created a man who was unflappable, who was faced with impossible situations and always found a solution. The Agent could rescue werewolves and converse with gods and halt alien invasions. The Agent understood the moral dilemmas that his role in the wider universe of Furious Comics presented. The Agent didn’t punish the wicked but he helped the scared and the needy, and his presence always foreshadowed that a greater force of change would come, that the agency he served would take care of people.

In contrast, Phil lived in the real world. When he had been young he had liked the unlikely problems presented in science fiction because they were so far removed from the problems of everyday life. Phil couldn’t remove the constant grind of the judgements that people passed on him for his lifestyle, but he had written stories about so many people and creatures being ostracised for some trait or quirk that was beyond their control and the Agent had always been able to help them somehow.

Then Steve Rogers had come along. Steve Rogers with his beautiful art and his perfectly lopsided smile and his appreciable kissing skills, and he had put pencil to paper and put Phil’s face to his creation. He had taken the symbol of the deep and aching desire Phil had to make things better and had effectively said _Here, this is you. This is what you need to be_. 

It made Phil feel so very inadequate. 

Phil found an unoccupied bench and sat down. Clint had bought him a ham and cheese sandwich on white bread, and Phil opened the packet and stared at his lunch for a long moment. Fury wouldn’t let him leave the script of the story arc unfinished, and it was nearly done regardless. Phil could request that Steve be taken off the project, but he knew that he’d regret that decision in the long run. He was working with one of his idols and Steve was submitting beautiful art. Phil could ask Steve to change the design, which would be an awkward conversation but not an irrational application for compromise. 

Phil turned the matter over in his mind as he ate. He was honestly curious as to why Steve had chosen portraiture over creating his own design. Phil liked Steve’s designs, liked the broad neatness of them and the effective way Steve composed complicated expressions with so few lines. The pages that Steve had submitted were more elaborate and detailed than his usual style. While they were breathtaking, Phil didn’t understand the change. Perhaps Steve was trying to impress his new employers. Perhaps the change was Steve showing his desire to grow and evolve as an artist. Phil didn’t know how to ask about such things tactfully. It would be easier if Steve were working with someone else – the teams at Furious expected Phil to be blunt and demanding in his communications. Things between Steve and himself were already awkward, and Phil didn’t want to exacerbate things by challenging Steve’s creative process.

Phil sighed to himself before popping the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth. The smart thing to do would be to take no action. Steve was well respected and could be trusted to make decisions about his own art. Maybe when the whole thing was wrapped up Phil would ask Steve about it. In the meantime, comics were a visual medium and Phil was just the writer. If he could exercise some self control and tear his eyes away from Steve’s pencils, then he was sure they could make it through the project without any clashes.

He spent the walk back to his office composing a list of tasks for his afternoon. The working week finished in a handful of hours, though he knew that most of the staff would be letting their hair down early. Working from home was often synonymous with having a bottle of wine open, and Phil had learned quickly that his e-mails and phone calls needed to get more pointed as the week progressed. By Friday afternoon, contact with the creative staff was pointless and he instead focused his energy on organising calendars for the following week and responding to the sales and press departments.

Natasha was out of the office once more by the time Phil returned, this time chasing down some new brushes, and Clint was carefully packing his little panels away with the pages they belonged to. He’d do his lettering on Monday morning, and spend time over the weekend plotting out the next cache of text boxes to draw and trim. Phil sat at his computer without acknowledging Clint, embarrassed by his outburst earlier. 

“I’m heading off,” Clint said when his desk was in order. 

Phil tore his attention away from the e-mail he was drafting, and gave Clint a smile. “Enjoy your weekend,” he said, and Clint gave him a lopsided grin in response. Clint and Phil clashed often, but they made amends quickly and easily.

Clint walked to the door with his jacket slung over one shoulder, then paused, bumping his fist against the doorframe. Phil leaned back in his chair, waiting for Clint to find the words he needed. Finally Clint turned around and glanced at Phil, before dropping his eyes and fixing them on Phil’s empty coffee mug. “You know that you’re a really great person, right?” Clint said to the mug. “If this guy is making things awkward, then to hell with him.”

Clint’s whole body was rigid, everything from the furrow between his eyebrows to the tight muscle of a clenched thigh beneath his jeans marking how uncomfortable he felt about having a heart-to-heart with his boss. Phil couldn’t help smiling at his discomfort. “Thanks for the pep talk,” Phil replied dryly.

Clint stared a Phil’s desk for a moment longer and then nodded to himself. “Well, I’m done. Good talk. See you next week.”


	5. Chapter 5

Steve walked through the hallways of Furious comics, glancing into doorways, looking up into the faces of the people he passed. He had been told that he could drop in whenever he wanted, and after working through the weekend and on to Wednesday in order to finish his pencils for the first issue, he needed to get out of his apartment. Phil had sent him an e-mail the previous Friday in response to the first few scans Steve had sent in. A simple “Looks good”. It had left Steve an emotional wreck, because what did “looks good” mean? Was that high praise? Was it awful and Phil was just being polite? Steve had spent another hour lying on the floor of his apartment before repeating Peggy and Bucky’s words of advice. Now that the pencils were done and he was giving his hand a break before getting to the ink, it was the perfect time to hunt Phil down and double check that the art was okay. And maybe they could do it over coffee. And have a whole conversation without Steve saying something stupid or picking a fight. Not that he wanted to fight with Phil. It was more that he got caustic and argumentative when he was uneasy. There would be none of that. Coffee, and maybe cake, and a nice and charming conversation about work. That was the goal.

It was a nice dream, but Phil wasn’t in his office. Steve frowned and loitered in the doorway for a moment, watching the two people inside. The man with headphones on, chewing on a pencil and carefully sketching letters onto a text box had to be Clint Barton, and the woman sitting at the back of the room mixing colours would be Natasha Romanov. Steve had seen grainy photos of the two of them on the Furious comics website, and he knew Natasha’s distinctive art style. He’d bought two copies of each of her Agent of Shield issues – one to keep mint and one to adore on a regular basis.

Steve cleared his throat and Natasha looked up at him. She blinked, and then reached over and thumped Clint’s shoulder, sending his pencil skidding over his text box. He swore, and turned and thumped Natasha back before stealing an eraser off her desk. “What?” he asked grumpily.

“Can we help you?” Natasha asked loudly, presumably so Clint could hear because her words made Clint look up and pull his headphones off, leaving him looking startled and dishevelled.

“Hey, you’re that Steve guy,” Clint said, and Steve nodded. “Clint,” Clint said as he pointed at himself, then he jerked his thumb at Natasha. “’Tasha.”

“Um, is Mister Coulson around?” Steve asked, because Phil was the head of this project and manners were important. Judging by the way Clint smirked at him and Natasha pressed a hand to her mouth, it was the wrong thing to say.

“Aren’t you precious?” Clint said, and Steve narrowed his eyes.

“Phil’s wrangling some press releases, and then he has a lunch meeting,” Natasha explained.

“Oh,” Steve replied, trying not to be too obvious about his dashed hopes. “Okay. I guess this’ll teach me to call first.”

“Was there anything you wanted us to pass on?” Natasha asked.

“We’ll definitely tell him you stopped by,” Clint said, something dark and amused in his voice. Steve didn’t know what the tone meant, and he was sure that his distaste at being made fun of showed on his face. Natasha punched Clint in the shoulder again, and Steve took comfort in knowing that he wasn’t the only one who thought that Clint was an ass.

“No,” Steve said, pushing away from the doorway. “Well, maybe. I submitted some pencils to him yesterday morning and I just wanted to check that they were okay. See if any changes needed to be made.”

Clint and Natasha exchanged a look. Steve couldn’t see Clint’s expression but Natasha’s had some involved eyebrow work going on. After a moment they seemed to come to a consensus and turned to face Steve in unison. It was a little disconcerting, but Steve held his ground. 

“He liked the pencils,” Clint said.

“He really liked them,” Natasha elaborated.

“Big thumbs up.”

“Oh,” Steve said. They could probably smell the fear on him, and were trying to be reassuring. “Well. That’s good, I guess.” Steve missed the brash and brave criticism of Stark Publishing. If Tony didn’t like something, people knew about it immediately. That was easy to work with. The mixed messages at Furious Comics were hard to adapt to.

“We’re actually being honest here,” Clint said seriously. 

“We were here when he opened the e-mail,” Natasha added.

Steve looked back and forth between them, trying to judge their honesty. “And he talked to you about it? The comic?”

Clint and Natasha exchanged another look and Steve tried not to get impatient with them. They were apparently treating the conversation like a team effort, making sure they were both on the same track before replying. 

“We’ve been in the room when Phil has hated something that’s come across his desk,” Natasha said delicately.

“And it’s easy to tell,” Clint finished. “Trust me. If he didn’t like it, you would have the longest, most detailed, most nit-picky e-mail of your life and the scans would have red marks all over the place and he would be huffing at us all day.”

“He’s made people cry,” Natasha added.

“Phil doesn’t see the point in beating around the bush, you know?” Clint said, looking up at Steve with a lopsided smile that suggested he found the trait endearing.

“That’s good, I guess,” Steve said. “Not the crying part, but.” He trailed off and reached a hand up to rub at his forehead. “So he doesn’t hate it,” he said, mostly to himself. “That’s a start.”

“You did good,” Natasha said firmly. 

“He kicked us out of the office yesterday so he could look over them without us making fun of him,” Clint added.

Steve frowned. “Why would you make fun of him?”

Another exchanged look. This time Clint seemed full of impish glee, and Natasha looked stern in response. “Clint makes fun of everyone,” she explained.

“Especially Phil,” Clint chimed in.

“And we knew that he was very impressed with the first pages you sent in.”

Steve perked up a little. “He was?”

Clint grinned. “It was really cute.”

Steve sagged against the doorframe, relief flooding through him. “Oh,” he said absently. “That’s good.”

Natasha smiled fondly at Steve. “You don’t have anything to worry about,” she said kindly.

“Trust us,” Clint added.

“But we’ll kick his ass when he gets back in and tell him to send you some feedback.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, running a hand through his hair. It was such a relief to know that Phil didn’t hate his work, and the suggestion that he might get another e-mail made him feel giddy. “If it’s not any trouble. I mean, I can just keep going, or...”

“No,” Natasha said firmly. “You came all this way to remind him to do his job,” Steve cringed, because that hadn’t been what he’d been aiming for at all. “We’ll make sure it gets done.”

“And we’ll give him hell about it, too,” Clint chimed in. “So this is kind of like a gift to us anyway.”

“It’s not that important,” Steve said, backpedalling because he didn’t want Phil to get tag-teamed by Clint and Natasha. They were intimidating enough when they were being nice. “I just wanted to check in.”

“Just call him,” Clint said flippantly, and Steve had to swallow the sudden lump in his throat. Bucky had given him some very similar advice, though obviously with different intentions. “He always has his phone on him, and if you leave a voice mail he’ll get back to you.”

“His number’s on his card,” Natasha said, rolling her chair over to Phil’s desk and pulling a drawer open. She handed to card to Steve, and since she’d gone to all of the trouble to get it he felt that it would be rude to tell her that one had been included in the packet. He thanked her as he took it, and then slipped it into his wallet.

“I should let you get back to work,” he said. “Thank you both for your time.”

“It was a pleasure meeting you,” Natasha said, and Clint contributed a little finger wave.

“Phil’s going to be bummed that he missed you,” Clint said, a grin on his face.

Steve didn’t know how to respond, so he gave them both a smile and then ducked back out into the hallway. He stopped by the store on his way home and grabbed a frozen pizza and some ginger ale. His plan for the rest of the day was to kick back, push all thoughts of the comic from his mind, and relax. Get rid of all of the uneasy anxiety that had accumulated over the past week. He had some movies about courageous animals to watch, and Peggy had given him an aromatherapy candle for relaxation over the weekend. It would be good to light it up and let the scent chase away the smell of old paper and cheap cleaning products that usually dominated his apartment. 

He started tidying up when he got home. Steve had never had a great number of possessions, and a lot of bulkier things like his couch were in the storage room he rented from Bruce. Steve would happily cram himself into the smallest space possible if it meant having a little extra money each month. Tony had paid him well and the contract Fury had given him seemed generous (hiring Steve on a contract rather than commissioning some freelance work had been _very_ generous), but Steve had grown up with very little and his economic policy was to scrimp and save and then give himself reasonable treats. He’d bought a new bed when he had moved into the cramped space, one that didn’t have ‘perfect for teens’ printed on the packaging, and that was why he’d had to relocate his couch. 

He had comics and art books spread out over nearly every flat surface. Steve had drawn through the days and reread his ‘Agent of Shield’ comics at night, falling back in love with the character. The Agent was compassionate but so composed. He had a dry humour but never made fun of people. Having one writer on a title had become rare in comics, and Steve respected Furious Comics for leaving Phil at the reins of his character. It would have crushed Steve to see a ‘brand new spin!’ put on such a classic character. The Agent reminded Steve of the leading men in so many of the old movies. There were scenes where the Agent pointed out a small detail that revealed a lie that seemed so reminiscent of Rhett Butler recognising the motives behind Scarlet O’Hara’s actions, that was a little Sherlock Holmes with a smooth dash of James Bond. He had a way of navigating social foibles that kept him thoroughly out of the soup and finding mirth in the increasing entanglements of others that seemed to be a direct homage to Jeeves, the quintessential gentleman’s gentleman. 

Steve smiled as he packed his comics away, removing the little scraps of paper that served as bookmarks. Some of the more special issues were bagged and boarded, but most simply went into the long boxes for his collection au naturale. When his rooms looked less like a tornado of comics had twisted through them, he put the oven on to preheat and pulled a slim novel off his bookshelf. It was a collection of Phil’s short stories, and Steve’s favourite because it had a story that used robot boyfriends to explore grief that always made him tear up. He opened the book to the inside of the back cover, where there was a black and white photo of Phil and a small biography. Steve stared at the picture. It had been taken at least a decade ago, going by the publication date. It was a photo of his profile as he wrote in a notebook, wearing a pair of glasses with thick black frames. Steve had assumed that Phil wore glasses as a fact of life, but he hadn’t seen Phil wear glasses at work and so concluded that they must be reading glasses. Or perhaps Phil wore contacts. Trying to find out would give him an excuse to stare into Phil’s eyes next time they met. Because that wouldn’t be weird at all.

Steve put the pizza in the oven and lit Peggy’s candle before settling back down on his bed. He furrowed his brow as he thought, trying to extract all that he had obsessively learned about Phil Coulson: science fiction writer and comic book hero creator, and what he had experienced of Phil Coulson: wearer of suits to gay bars and administrator of awkwardly formal handshakes in the workplace. He knew that Phil had a nice voice. That he was handsome. That his co-workers were fond of him. That he kept his workspace neat and organised. Even the pictures pinned by his desk had been neatly arranged, though Steve hadn’t had a chance to examine them. 

The Agent was clearly a self-portrait. Steve had read as much in an interview, when Phil had discussed the art for the first three issues. The lines were thick and clunky, and the perspective was off and the colours were blacks and blues and greens and nothing else. Steve loved them. They were artless and lacking in technique, but there was something so earnest about the careful lines of the panels. Phil had been confronted with the awkward situation of their hook up bleeding into his professional life and he had sidestepped it and ignored it, focussing instead on the job. That was how the Agent cut to the quick of every problem – he ignored the things that were irrelevant. Looking at it through that lens just made Steve sigh like a love-struck teen once more. Seeing the qualities of his fictional hero in his real life idol? Someone who Steve had kissed, whose body he had laid hands on... It was thrilling and embarrassing and arousing and enough to turn him to mush. He had no idea how he would keep his crush under control while working with Phil. 

Steve could hear Tony in his ear then, telling him to give up on control, to live a little. He conjured up a mental image of Bruce to be the angel on his shoulder. Bruce shrugged, pointed out quite logically that Steve wasn’t the only one feeling some attraction – Steve had hit on Phil at a bar and Phil had responded quite positively. It was something that Steve had avoided thinking about because he knew that madness lay in torturing himself with ‘what ifs’. There was work to be done. But with both Bruce and Tony egging him on, Steve toyed with the idea of calling Phil. It would be a horrible experience – he had already established that he couldn’t be trusted to be composed, and no doubt he would stammer and snipe his way through a painfully stilted conversation. 

On the other hand, Bucky had pointed out to Steve over dinner on Saturday that it was silly to write off any positive future interactions together. After their moment together at the club, it had to be obvious that he was attracted to Phil, even without the intrinsic and awe-inspiring Phil-ness of him. Steve had ground against him, had made it very clear that an anonymous Phil still made him hard. And Phil had obviously found something desirable in Steve. It made sense that Phil would want to keep things between them strictly professional while they were working together, but that didn’t mean that professional politeness was the only option available to them. 

Steve smiled as he resolved to call Phil the next day, to touch base on the project and to try to forge something a little more friendly between them. He closed the slim book and tossed it onto his bedside table. The book hit the side of the candle, which teetered at the edge of the table for a moment, and then toppled slowly to the floor.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay in updates! I've been sick and all of my spare time has been spent sleeping :-(

Phil frowned at his phone as it rang. It was a Thursday night and he was enjoying the peace and quiet that his apartment afforded. “Coulson,” he said by way of greeting.

“Uh, hi,” a harried voice said on the other end of the line. There was a commotion in the background, and Phil could hear sirens.

“Clint?” Phil guessed.

“No, this is Steve. Steve Rogers.” He sounded jittery and breathless. It was clearly not a happy and carefree social call.

Phil pressed a hand to his face. “Please tell me you don’t need me to post bail.” Every single person he worked with seemed to feel a need to get arrested. He was sure they did it just to test him. 

“No! No, nothing like that. Well, a little like that. I’m sorry but my phone is still inside and I had your card with me and I was...” Steve trailed off, wheezing into the phone for a moment before he found the strength to suck in another breath. “... Meaning to call anyway.” Steve’s voice was trembling as he rambled, and Phil frowned in concern.

“Steve, what’s going on?”

There was a pause as Steve took a shuddery breath. “My apartment is on fire,” he said. “I’m out the front. We’re all out but I left quickly and I just grabbed what I could and... And the pages are still inside.” Steve’s voice cracked as he imparted the news, as if losing a bit of work was the worst thing that could happen.

“It’s okay,” Phil found himself saying. “As long as you’re okay, it’ll be okay.”

“I just didn’t... know who to call. All of my numbers are in my phone and my phone is... is probably melted right now and,” Steve hiccoughed. “And my comics, Phil. Some of my comics are still up there. They won’t... let me inside.”

“It’s okay,” Phil repeated. “You’re at a payphone?”

“Uh-huh,” Steve replied. “Outside my building.”

Phil turned to his computer and clicked through a few documents, looking for Steve’s contract which would have his residential details. “Look, I’ll come and pick you up,” Phil said as he carefully wrote out Steve’s address. “I know the street, I won’t be too long.”

Steve just breathed heavily in response. He sounded like he was close to tears. Phil grabbed up his keys and headed out the door.

Steve lived in a narrow studio apartment, inside a narrow redbrick building that was crammed between two other narrow buildings. Phil had to park illegally half a block away, because the narrow street was taken up by a fire engine. There were no flames exploding out of the building, and barely any smoke. Phil initially worried that he wouldn’t find Steve in the crowd, but he noticed that a lot of the evacuated residents were shooting dark looks towards a phone box, and Phil followed the sinking feeling in his stomach.

Steve was sitting on the damp pavement outside the phone box, with a long box of comics that looked almost as big as he was clutched possessively in his arms. He looked up at Phil with his mouth open, still struggling to breathe though he far calmer than he had sounded on the phone. 

“Do I even want to know?” Phil asked.

“Knocked a candle,” Steve said weakly. “Into a tin of thinner.”

“I see.”

“And then, with all the paper...”

Phil turned and looked back at the building. “Could be worse,” he said at last, and when he turned back, Steve was nodding miserably. “You okay?”

“Inhaler’s upstairs,” Steve said. 

“We’ll get you a new one,” Phil returned. “Come on, up you get.” He wrapped a hand around Steve’s arm and tugged him to his feet, neatly taking the long box from Steve’s arm and prodding his shoulders until he was standing up straight. Opening his chest up would help him to breathe, and the sooner Steve had his lungs under control the sooner Phil could find out just how dire the situation was. After a few moments of breathing deeply through his mouth, Steve looked up at Phil and nodded.

The Steve Rogers who talked to the fire fighters and police officers was more like the man who had chatted Phil up in a horrible bar – cool and calm and a little bit stubborn. Though he was obviously shaken, Steve held his head high and pushed his shoulders back whenever someone tried to scold him. He handled the confirmation that a lot of his possessions had been reduced to ash and then turned to sludge with dignity, though his body did waver as though he’d been struck.

“You got somewhere to stay while this all gets cleaned up?” Officer Morse asked him.

Steve didn’t immediately reply, and Phil took that as permission to speak up. “He’s staying with me tonight,” he said. “We can negotiate something more permanent in the morning.” Phil gave Officer Morse his card and told her that she would be able to contact Steve through him for the next twenty-four hours, at least.

“Don’t leave this kid unattended in your kitchen,” she advised him, and then shooed them both away with a wave of her hand.

“You don’t have to take me in,” Steve said as he trailed after Phil. It was likely that the only reason he was following was because Phil still had Steve’s box in his arms. “I have friends I can stay with.”

“Can you remember any of their phone numbers?” Phil asked. Steve didn’t reply, but his jaw shifted moodily. “That’s what I thought. You can use my computer to get in touch with them. I have an old phone somewhere that you can use until you can rescue your sim card.” He opened the trunk of his car and stowed Steve’s box inside. Phil would have liked to avoid having a car in New York, but Nick had decided that the only way to ensure that everyone who flew into and out of the city for various meetings wound up in the right place was to send Phil to ferry them about. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve said as Phil drove them homewards. “About the comic. I had all the pencils looking right, and then...”

“These things happen,” Phil said kindly. “I wrote a book once, on a typewriter. Very old school. I had it all packaged up to be copied before I sent it to my publisher. I was so nervous about it that I stepped in front of a bus while I was crossing the street.” Phil glanced over at Steve and saw that he was watching with quiet intensity. He was probably surprised that Phil did anything more than the occasional silly comic. “Anyway, when I finally stopped thinking I was dead, there were pages everywhere. In the bus, in the gutter, all over. I must have covered eight city blocks trying to collect them all up.”

“And did you?” Steve asked.

“No. I got maybe half of them. Had to go home and type it up all over again.” Phil glanced at Steve again and offered him a rueful smile. “Used a computer the second time around.”

Steve huffed, a sound that could be a laugh or could be dismissal. “Anyway,” Phil continued. “I’ve got your scans, so it’s not all lost.”

There was a pause as Phil pulled into his building. “Are they okay?” Steve asked as Phil parked. “The scans?”

Phil paused, wondering how to answer without scaring Steve off completely. “They’re good,” he said at last. “Very good.”

Steve nodded, and opened the passenger door. “Good,” he said firmly, and then he climbed out.

Phil needed time to assemble some kind of dinner when they reached the apartment, and Steve smelled like smoke and sweat, so Phil dug out some spare clothes and sent Steve off to shower. He put frozen lasagne and a stick of garlic bread into the oven and, without feeling especially guilty about the trespass, opened up Steve’s long box. How often did someone get the chance to browse through the comic collection of one of their favourite artists? Phil was curious as to Steve’s influences, and even more curious to see what he had chosen to save from the fire.

Phil put on his glasses and picked out a comic at random, glanced at the cover and then did a double-take. He flipped through it carefully, faintly registering the sound of running water stopping and the quiet noises of someone dressing themselves. “I’m being rude,” he called when Steve stepped into the living room again. When Steve didn’t come any closer, Phil looked up at him and smile. “You must have hit up ebay straight away,” he said.

Steve looked stricken. “Uh, that’s not...” he trailed off, apparently embarrassed.

Phil shook his head, occupied by fondness at the comic in his hands. “Even I don’t have this one any more,” he confessed. “And I think I’m one of three people who bought a copy. You must have paid a fortune.”

Steve finally padded closer. “Actually,” he said levelly. “I paid two dollars.” Phil glanced up at him in surprise and Steve lifted his jaw, a stubborn expression on his face as though he were preparing himself for a firing squad. “Admittedly, I didn’t get it on the day it came out,” he continued. “I was sick and had to wait a whole week until I could get down to the newsagent. I damn near drove everyone nuts complaining about it.”

Phil raised his eyebrows and stared at Steve in surprise as the admission sank in. “I didn’t know you read,” he said at last, and then quickly amended himself. “Read this.”

Steve took a deep, steadying breath. “It’s why I got into comics,” he said gravely, as though it were the most serious confession of his life. “As a job. I was reading comics anyway, but.” He paused, swallowed. “I appreciate your work, sir.”

Phil stared at Steve for a long moment, the small figure looking smaller still on one of Phil’s old shirts with his wet hair combed neatly into place. “You’re just full of surprises,” Phil said at last, and Steve shifted uneasily.

“I didn’t know it was you,” Steve said bluntly. “In the bar. With the kissing. Not until you introduced yourself. If I’d known I wouldn’t... I might still have offered to buy you a drink, but I wouldn’t... We were actually out celebrating,” Steve’s cheeks were growing redder and redder as he continued. “Me working with you. It was... It's kind of a big deal for me. I’m sorry.”

Phil had assumed that Steve had put their first encounter out of his mind. The realisation that Steve had been so concerned about that moment made Phil feel like an ass for his stiff, overly-formal response. “I suspect I’ve made things more awkward than they’ve needed to be,” Phil found himself saying. Steve looked deeply mortified at his string of confessions, and while Phil was still reeling at the news that _Steve Rogers_ had read his comics, he was aware that he had a confession of his own to make. He carefully slipped the comic back into its place in the box, and stood up. “Come with me,” he said, and he led Steve through his apartment.

Phil had some art throughout his home. Given his job, it was hard for him to avoid it. The few pieces he had on his walls were deeply indulgent – a birthday card that Natasha and Clint had made for him, a photo from a convention of a group of cosplayers dressed as the Agent, some frames or pages from comics that had crossed his desk that he particularly liked. The piece that he should be most embarrassed about hung in his bedroom, pride of place over his bed. He stood beside Steve in the doorway, and they stared at the framed and mounted poster of Captain America in all his four-colour glory.

“That’s a convention poster,” Steve said at last, his sharp eyes drinking in the detail, the sloppy signatures over the poster.

“I bought it at auction,” Phil explained.

“I remember,” Steve said. “It was my first con, and I was hoping to get it as a memento.”

“Sorry for stealing it from you,” Phil said genuinely.

Steve shook his head. “It was out of my price range long before the auction was over. Why do you..?”

“I was going to retire from comics,” Phil admitted, something he had never seriously discussed with anyone before because not even Fury would entertain the notion. “It just wasn’t what it used to be. I didn’t like the medium anymore, the stories that were being told. I thought it was all blood and guns and gunk. And then someone gave me a copy of your comic.”

“That was me,” Steve said weakly. “I had this whole speech prepared in my head and I wanted to ask for your autograph, but there was a crowd around you after the panel and I just...” he mimed pushing a comic book at an unseen person in front of him, and Phil smiled. “I didn’t think you’d read it. I just needed to give it to you for me.”

“I read it,” Phil replied. “I loved it,” and Steve sagged against the doorframe like the air had been let out of him. “And I decided to stick it out in comics a little longer. So I bought the poster to remind me of that moment.”

Steve huffed again, his eyes still fixed on the cheesy grin of Captain America across the room. “That thing went for over a grand,” he commented.

“I was feeling sentimental,” Phil replied. He turned and looked down at Steve. “Thank you,” he said sincerely. 

Steve looked up at Phil with large eyes, his lips slightly parted. He looked dazed, overwhelmed. As unprofessional as it was, Phil liked that look on him. “Can I do something stupid?” Steve asked.

There were no flammable objects or open flames around Steve. It seemed safe enough. “Sure,” Phil replied.

Steve reached up and put a hand at the back of Phil’s neck, and Phil closed his eyes and tilted his head down. Given Steve’s contract and the comic they had to salvage, given the history between them, it was a very, very stupid idea. But, as Steve brushed his lips against Phil’s in a manner so very unlike the last time they had kissed, Phil couldn’t help feeling that it had been a long time coming.


	7. Chapter 7

Steve looked up as Phil leaned in the doorway, the sounds of the party clear behind him. “Are you hiding in here?” Phil asked, amusement in his voice.

“No,” Steve said, and scowled as Phil grinned at him. “I’m getting snacks,” he said defensively. Perhaps cutting cheese into cubes didn’t require quite so much care and attention, but Steve prided himself on the detail of his work.

They had, despite all of the setbacks and distractions (thrilling, sexy distractions) completed the six-issue run of Agent of Shield. Steve had needed to start on the art all over again after the fire, but Fury had shouted until an office at Furious Comics made itself available to him and work had proceeded quickly and cleanly with Phil dropping in every now and again to check on his progress, and Steve being able to nip down the hall to ask Phil a question. The two of them making out against Phil’s desk once everyone else had left for the day. 

They had talked about the possibility of Steve moving in with Phil, of turning a brief sleepover into a regular arrangement, but they were both a little too responsible to jump into the deep end. Working together, being together, living together – it held far too much potential for ending badly. So Steve had moved in with Bucky, and had complained about living with Bucky to Peggy, and had complained about Peggy’s lack of sympathy to Bucky, and had firmly ignored the two of them giving him ‘I told you so’ looks when Phil took him out for dinner.

They had agreed have their own home territories until the comic was done, to see if the hot spark between them lasted that long. The final issue had been sent to the printers that morning. Phil would be abusing the company car to help Steve move his things across town the following day. Half of Steve’s clothes were already in the dresser, and a spare inhaler was in the nightstand with the condoms and lube. He was excited and terrified, and the way Phil was smiling fondly at him made Steve want to pull Phil close and do wonderful things with him, to tell everyone out in the living area that the party was over and that sex would be happening in the very near future, so they would all need to vacate in a safe and orderly manner.

As if reading Steve’s mind, Phil stepped forwards and pressed a kiss to Steve’s cheek bone. Steve turned his head eagerly and they indulged in a slow, deep kiss, Phil’s hand warm on Steve’s shoulder and the sounds of the final issue celebration forgotten for a moment. “Your friends are threatening to beat up my friends,” Phil murmured into Steve’s hair when they eased apart.

“They are not.”

“Peggy and Sue are arguing with Sue’s boyfriend over who founded the genre of science fiction, and Tony and Hank have resorted to arm wrestling to settle their disputes.”

Steve pressed his face against Phil’s shoulder. “Oh no,” he groaned.

“Bucky seems to be having fun egging them on,” Phil added, before pressing another kiss to Steve’s hair. “But perhaps some supervision is in order.”

Steve pulled back and gave Phil a critical look. “If they need someone to keep an eye on them, then why are you in here with me?”

Phil reached past him and plucked a cube of cheese off the cutting board. “Sustenance,” he said simply, before popping the cheese in his mouth. “I can’t afford to use up all of my energy before Clint and Natasha get here.”

Steve quirked one corner of his mouth up. “You’ll need some left over for when we kick everyone out,” he warned.

Phil leaned close again and nibbled on Steve’s ear, making him shiver. “All the more motivation for you to get out there and put Stark on a leash,” he murmured.

The intercom buzzed, and Steve pushed Phil away and gestured for him to go and let more guests in. They had planned on having a small group of friends for dinner, but writers and artists had a sixth sense for registering the possibility of free food and the party had blown a little out of proportion. Steve hadn’t met Hank Pym before that evening, despite having worked with Furious Comics for about seven months. Johnny Storm was in the apartment somewhere and Steve _still_ hadn’t technically been introduced to the man. He had, however, been given the opportunity to place a wager on whether Johnny and Bucky would hook up when they eventually stopped circling the room. Steve had declined – the outcome seemed too sure to even bother betting.

Steve finished turning one block of cheese into many blocks of cheese, then took the time to make a pleasing arrangement with a boarder of crackers and a little cup of toothpicks in the centre. He had toyed with the idea of making a little sculpture, perhaps something of the log cabin variety using breadsticks, but while Phil was a wonderful person he was also not above picking Steve up and physically moving him when Steve tried to dig his heels in. Being carried into the bedroom was a romantic notion. Being carried into the living room to socialise with his own friends would be mortifying. 

Steve knew that he should be grateful that so many people had shown up to celebrate with them. The comic was worth celebrating – the story was just... Steve had cried a little when he had first read the script for the final issue (and then he’d come out of the bedroom and seen Phil sitting on the couch, trying to play it cool but clearly fretting, worrying because he cared about Steve’s opinion of the _painfully perfect_ story arc). And Steve was proud of his own contributions, the opportunity to bring more detail to his work and to try new things. The most serious issue that Steve and Phil had butted heads over so far had been of which boards they were going to frame, and where they would be displayed. Phil had tried to stake claim on some for his office, and Steve had countered that they were his pages and he should get to decide where they found their new home. Director Fury had overheard the argument and settled it for them, by taking the framed page out of Phil’s hands and hanging it in his own office. They’d been told they could have it back when they had resolved the custody battle. 

Steve suspected that Fury was lying on that score. The little smile on his face was that of a man who had no intention of giving up the goods.

Steve returned to the living area with his tray of snacks just in time to see Natasha tugging Phil towards the bedroom and Clint pushing him along. Phil had worried that they would make the night interesting, and it looked as though they had lived up to his expectations. Steve shoved the tray at Bucky as he crossed the room, and then quietly followed the trio down the short hallway to Phil’s bedroom.

“No,” he could hear Phil saying. “No, no, no. You did not do this.”

“We did!” Clint said cheerfully.

“I’m hurt that you would doubt us,” Natasha added.

“I’m hurt that you both _committed a felony_. Again.”

“We did it for you,” Natasha replied in a soothing voice, slipping her arm around Phil’s shoulders and squeezing them.

“And we didn’t get caught this time,” Clint added proudly, and Natasha shot him a dark glare. Steve allowed his curiosity to overcome him and he stepped into the room.

There was something laid out across Phil’s bed. A large piece of vinyl that had a bright image printed on it. Steve thought that it looked like one of the long, vertical banners that hung in the entrance foyer of Stark Publishing. Then he stepped closer, and realised there was a very simple explanation for the similarity.

“We tried to get it for you when his contract first started,” Clint explained.

“And you got arrested,” Phil said flatly.

“See? We’re learning!” Phil made a pained noise and pressed a hand to his face.

“Huh,” Steve said loudly, making the other three jump. He walked up to the bed and looked down at the banner. “I’ve never seen it up close before.”

It was a promotional image of Captain America, longer than a person was tall (and much longer than Steve), with his shield raised and one arm outstretched, leaping into action. Steve smiled down at the banner with mixed feelings – he owned Captain America, but Stark Publishing had the distribution rights and Steve honestly wasn’t sure when he’d be able to work with the character again. He’d gone from doodling the Agent as a break from drawing Capitan America, to doodling the Captain when he was resting his brain from working on the Agent. It was a strange shift, even if it was a good one.

“Look your fill,” Phil said grumpily. “Because they’re going to be giving it _back_.”

“No way,” Clint protested. “Absolutely not. After all the trouble we went to?”

“After you stole property from a competing comic distributer, and then brought it into my home _while Tony Stark is in my living room_ ,” Phil returned, his tone sharp and icy.

“Hey, I thought that beard looked familiar.”

“Unless you’re planning on bringing Tony Stark into your bedroom,” Natasha said calmly, her arm still around Phil’s shoulders, “it’s not going to be a problem.” Phil huffed, but otherwise didn’t argue. He was clearly unhappy with the situation, but Steve had seen Phil when he was angry and Clint and Natasha weren’t fleeing the scene. There was a chance that Phil was touched by the gesture. 

“You two go be sociable,” Steve said, nodding towards the door. “We’ll figure out the master plan for dealing with this.” Natasha gave Phil a squeeze before slipping away and Clint clapped Steve on the shoulder as he passed, the enthusiastic gesture making Steve stumble a little.

“So,” Steve said when they were alone again. “The bedroom already has one Captain America poster, so you can’t hang it in here. It’d look cluttered.” Phil gave Steve an unimpressed look, and Steve smirked back before bumping his shoulder against Phil’s arm. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll talk to Tony. He’ll probably find it funny. Or if you like, I could talk to Tony and Fury about it, and let the two of them sort out what to do with your master thieves.”

“Don’t call them that,” Phil said. “It only encourages them.”

“I think it’s sweet,” Steve returned. “Though walking into your bedroom a few months ago and seeing _that_ may have been a little daunting.” 

Phil snorted. “I don’t know why they can’t just go back to giving me cards,” Phil said dryly. “I like cards.”

“I like you,” Steve said simply, and when Phil turned to look down at Steve there was a smile on his face. He wrapped an arm around Steve, and Steve sank contentedly into the warmth of Phil’s side.

“We’re not keeping it,” Phil said after a moment of silence.

“I’ll paint the Agent on the back,” Steve returned. “We can flip between them every month.”

“Definitely not,” Phil replied. “You like the Agent a little too much as it is.” Steve poked Phil in the ribs but didn’t deny the allegation, and Phil pulled Steve more tightly against his side. 

After the first pages had been lost in the fire, and Phil and Steve had finally had a long and meandering conversation about various things, Steve had changed his design a little. The Agent was still, to Steve’s eyes, very much a portrait of Phil but the form had become a little more angular and a little less nuanced. Phil no longer had the uneasy feeling that he was looking into a mirror when he poured over the art, though he did occasionally tease Steve for making the character look too handsome. _“He’s supposed to blend into the background,”_ Phil had chided. Steve had stuck with his instinct on the matter, and the reviewers certainly seemed to have appreciated the decision.

“I won’t tell anyone if you sleep under it,” Steve said. Phil growled and scooped Steve up, dumping him onto the middle of the bed.

“I’m going to wrap you up in it,” Phil said as he grabbed the edge of the banner. “And then I’m going to mail you back to Stark.”

“I think we both know you’re the one who wants to be wrapped up in Captain America’s arms,” Steve shot back as he scrambled free. He grabbed Phil’s arm and tugged sharply on it, making Phil tumble gracelessly onto the bed. There was a small scuffle that ended with Steve triumphantly straddling Phil’s middle, and Phil smiling up at him with a sharp smile that easily turned fond, that made Steve ache in the best ways inside. 

“Weren’t you just telling me off for neglecting our guests?” Steve asked as Phil ran his hands up Steve’s thighs.

“Mm,” Phil agreed. “You’re a bad host. And a bad influence. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Steve toyed with the buttons at the front of Phil’s shirt. “If we’ve been ignoring them for this long, they can wait another few minutes, right?”

Phil propped himself up on one elbow. “We can hope,” he replied. Steve dipped his head and pressed his mouth to Phil’s, a slow and easy kiss that heated when Steve sucked on Phil’s lower lip and simmered when Phil gripped Steve’s hip and pulled him closer.

A loud crash came from the living room, and Phil and Steve reluctantly parted. “You need quieter friends,” Steve observed. Phil gave him a pointed look, and in the silence of the bedroom Steve could hear Bruce and Tony arguing over whatever damage had just been wrought. Which strongly implied that Tony was involved, if not entirely to blame. Steve sighed, and crawled down Phil’s body and off the bed. Maybe he could get Tony to behave by bribing him with a Captain America banner.

“Come on,” he said as he tugged Phil to his feet. “Let’s go be nice to our guests.” 

The party wasn’t the smoothest social event Steve had ever attended, and in that way it fit in perfectly with the past year. Humps and bumps and delays and arguments. Spilled drinks and a broken picture frame and the neighbours complaining about Johnny and Bucky necking in the hallway. (Steve tried to give Bucky a stern talking to about that, despite not having a leg to stand on when it came to public decency and the act of feeling someone up in a hallway.) It was a hectic mess of Cheetos ground into the carpet and people who thoroughly enjoyed laughing at each other over drinks that someone else had paid for. 

But it was also a night celebrating two people who loved comics and loved each other. And Steve thought that was one of the most perfect stories that he had been a part of.

  


The end.


End file.
